


lather, rinse, repeat

by writerdragonfly



Series: cycles of us [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3325454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Now that I'm mature enough to feel devil's touch, we're gonna fuck until we're numb.” -Banshee (Ghost Fame) by LetLive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lather, rinse, repeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelessAyase](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelessAyase/gifts).



> I have never written anything quite like this and this is my first foray into Criminal Minds fic, so I hope you enjoy it.

The first time it happened, he hadn't slept in three days. The Fisher King was dead, Rebecca rescued. But still, Reid had felt like he should have, could have saved them both.

Morgan found him in his apartment staring into a long empty mug of tea, the leaves dried up and stained along the bottom.

They didn't talk about it. Spencer wasn't even sure which one of them moved first, but they ended up pressed into each other on his bed.

Derek fucked into him until he was a writhing mess, and even then he wasn't sure how it happened.

He didn't regret it.

 

-x-

 

They spent the rest of Sunday fucking. Derek didn't leave until the early morning hours on Monday, snatching enough time to repack his go bag, shower and change before they both showed up to work.

It took one look, and they were somehow in silent agreement.

_Nothing happened._

They didn't act any differently; they didn’t talk about it.

Spencer expected it to be a one-time event; one day and two nights tangled in each other in sweat and semen soaked sheets.

It lasted until it didn’t.

 

-x-

 

Morgan was arrested. When they finally made it back to Quantico, Spencer managed to wait three whole hours before he showed up at Morgan's door. He didn't mean for it to be about sex. He meant to check up on him, to see how he was doing after all that, how he was handling it. To be a better friend to Morgan than he'd been to Elle, in the end.

"He didn't break me," Morgan said. And Reid replied, "I know."

Spencer kissed him hard on the lips and it felt like a challenge. Prove that you are still okay with the way a man's body feels or maybe fuck me until you forget how that man nearly ripped you apart.

He didn’t know, exactly, what it meant, what it means.

Derek kissed back just as hard, and Spencer wasn't sure which one of them ended up with a split lip because they both tasted the faint smear of blood, they were both caught up in the fierceness of the moment. Spencer lost a button and Derek managed to bust his zipper but before long they were mostly naked and fucking against each other against the back of Derek's apartment door like they were teenagers.

Spencer didn't leave until the early morning hours.

But duty called and they both answered.

 

-x-

 

They still didn't talk about it. They didn't act like anything had changed.

 

-x-

 

After Hankel, Reid pulled away from even their normal, casual friendship. Morgan tried to get him to at least acknowledge that, but in the end, the pull of the Dilaudid was enough that Reid didn't care about much of anything.

Eight days clean, Morgan showed up to check on him and Spencer kissed him like a promise. They didn't fuck, not then--Spencer was still suffering from the dregs of withdrawal and Derek was still too pissed off at him for even the thrill of angry, no-strings-attached sex.

 

-x-

 

But it wasn't a relationship--not that way. They were friends who sometimes kissed and fucked in unspoken silence.

Reid continued to play the role of innocent virgin nerd, and Morgan continued to be a playboy who went home with a different girl every weekend.

 

-x-

  
They didn’t slip up. After the particularly difficult cases, they fell into each other after everyone else was gone. They fucked until the early daylight hours and slipped away in time to shower and show up to work at different times.

It was easy. Natural.

But they weren’t dating. There weren’t rigid lines to this thing between them--it just was.

Morgan continued to pick up one night stands and Reid still tried to find a date here and there. Neither one of them made it more than it was--a mutual release of tension.

No one knew about it, as far as they were aware. He suspected that Garcia would be the first to find out if anyone would, but she didn’t even allude to knowing.

It continued in the same irregular pattern for years, through Gideon leaving and Foyet and a hundred other catalysts.

They kept sleeping together without acknowledging it, kept their strong friendship a separate thing.

 

-x-

 

When the headaches started, the only thing he could find to stop them temporarily was the sweet bliss of Derek pushing into him, the sticky press of his body against his as they slept for a scant few hours, the taste of his nearly bruising kiss as they came together.

He didn't tell Derek this. He didn't try to see him more often, didn't try to convince Morgan anything was wrong. He did the opposite.

This could be his fall and he refused to bring Derek Morgan down too.

 

-x-

 

_"Well, have you considered..."_

_"Considered what?"_

_"A psychosomatic cause."_

 

-x-

 

The doctor's words rang in his ears like bells, alarms that echoed.

He refused to think about his mother, the way her condition unraveled.

He refused to think about it all.

Instead, he found ways to manage it. To make them bearable instead of agonizing and overpowering.

 

-x-

 

He let Derek back into his bedroom after a tough case--a woman in a schizophrenic break after accidentally killing her son. She had gone on a spree, killing women who looked like herself.

And Reid could see his mother's face pasted on the woman's like a papier-mâché mask.

He felt a little by hollowed out afterward. It didn't last, by the break of morning he was back at work and back in his usual headspace.

 

-x-

 

When Prentiss died, Reid spiraled. He spent weeks crying to JJ because she of all people should have understood. He and Derek spent half their nights in that time with their family all broken up, fucking until they passed out.

Some mornings, it was all Reid could do just to crawl out of bed. Some nights, Derek was the only reason he hadn't crawled into a pit of Dilaudid and his own filth.

They don't do much to hide what they spend most of their nights doing. It didn’t seem to matter because no one noticed anyway. Too caught up in grief, in burying themselves in cases and custodial interviews.

 

-x-

 

And then everything got flipped like a Scrabble board full of selfish words suddenly cascading like rain onto the floor.

Emily Prentiss stepped back into their lives like nothing had happened and Reid felt like every string was suddenly pulled too tight, like he was a marionette who had been broken and repaired one too many times.

He fucked Derek for the first and only time the night they got back from the first case with the team back together. It wasn't sweet or graceful or particularly enjoyable for either of them, and he knew that Derek probably wouldn't let anyone else ever do it, but... he thought maybe they both needed it a little. A little role changing, a little less careful and a little more danger somehow.

They returned to their old routine of early morning wake up and retreating in silence, cold showers in their own apartments and clean clothes from their dressers.

 

-x-

 

Still, no one noticed. Just like they hadn't noticed Reid wearing the same rumpled dress shirt two days in a row or Morgan walking in with Reid's scarf a few weeks before Prentiss returned from the dead.

It ate away at him, between carefully managed headaches and a distinct slowing of his nights being fucked by his best friend in somber but passionate silence.

Prentiss' retreat after JJ's wedding didn't feel like a goodbye. He didn't join Morgan and Garcia when they traveled to visit her in London. A part of him wanted to, a part of him wanted to spend a few weeks holed up in a hotel in a foreign country with Derek Morgan fucking him until he forgot everything but the feel of him.

 

-x-

 

He bonded with Blake easily enough. He thought that maybe she could understand some parts of him that no one else on the team had in a long time.

She didn't know the secrets about him that the rest of their team could never forget, and he thought she could be as close to him as Morgan was--without the personal intimate knowledge the other man had gained through their years of secret liaisons, because he had no inclination to share them or see her that way.

Maeve happened on accident. He hadn't meant for anything to spark between them. He didn't even know what color her hair was but he started pulling away from Derek after cases and spending hours pouring over letters and whispering on pay phones instead.

He didn't know if it was any healthier than having sex with Derek, having a secret _something_ with someone whose entire identity was hidden away from him.

But he fell in love with her letters and the sound of her voice and nothing else really mattered.

Of course, Spencer Reid didn't think he was built to have something real last for long.

Nothing except whatever thing he had with Derek had, and that had nothing to do with feelings, right?

 

-x-

 

_"Well, have you considered..."_

_"Considered what?"_

_"A psychosomatic cause."_

 

-x-

 

He thought about the doctor's words now, after all the things Maeve had him do to relieve the pain and stop them coming. About how she had made his life better and about how they had begun to return with her death.

The headaches were, he knew now, psychosomatic after all. He didn't realize why until Maeve, until after she was gone.

He remembered, in the weeks after she was buried, the look on Morgan's face when he looked at him. A flicker of something he couldn't quite identify. It wasn't pity, but something different. Something more heartbroken than anything else.

Reid felt like he had perhaps misunderstood everything they had been to each other after that.

Derek never showed up like he might have before Maeve. They didn’t fall into each other when everything around them turned into a terrifying mess, and Reid didn’t know what to do.

 

-x-

 

When he heard about Savannah, about Morgan happily dating someone long term--then he knew.

Then he really knew.

He was in love with Derek Morgan. He was in love with sweaty nights in silence and teasing jokes and talks during car rides and building off each other's ideas and just _everything_ that Derek was.

But they weren't anything but friends now. Weren't anything but people who used to be something secret.

Reid saw how happy Savannah Hayes made Morgan. How his smiles started actually reaching his whole face again, how he felt real again.

He knew that Derek had probably been heartbroken about Maeve. Because Reid had loved her and lost her, and because there was a part of him that must have wanted Reid to feel that way about him.

Reid had never been good with understanding that kind of feeling. He knew fear and loneliness and terror and panic and a million other things. But he'd never been in a relationship with anyone that lasted.

No one except Maeve, and Derek.

And look how those both ended up.

With Reid alone on the sidelines with a broken heart and no way to change it.

Maeve was gone, and Derek was happy.

At least one of them could get their happy ending.

Reid let out a long sigh, pictured Morgan and his faceless girlfriend, Derek's blissful smile, and went back to work.

The loneliness was worth it, for that smile.


End file.
